A blog post after almost 8 years, in my Linux Experimentation Blog. The latest release of Plucky Puffin made me so elated to write this Blog Post as a review of the Kubuntu 25.04 which is codenamed Plucky Puffin. A longtime Linux user and a KDE fan, I have mostly used Kubuntu or Debian KDE.
Of late, I have been using Kubuntu as my daily driver for almost two years on my Asus Zenbook UX3402ZA. I am an adventurous Linux distro user, not hesitating to use beta versions, but my age and focus in life currently, prevents me to do so. However, the youth in was ailing to test the latest KDE 6 iteration. However, I had to wait till the latest Ubuntu release 25.04 which would allow me to use the polished KDE 6.3 version which I was longing for. I was waiting for the 17th of April to arrive in my calendar, often checking the news for the release of 25.04 version of Ubuntu. I live in India and I got the version update notification at around 9.30 pm on my laptop. I had my hard disk to the brim, so had to delete a few large video files to allow space for the upgrade.
The GUI upgrade tool had some glitches and threw up a few errors. So I took the command line route for the install. The updater showed an upgrade of around 2400 packages to be upgraded, some additional packages to be added and a few packages to be removed. I started with "Y" and waited anxiously. Despite my fast home broadband, the in.archive.ubuntu.com servers were probably a bit slow and it took a lot of time downloading packages. The downloads lasted for about an hour and then the unpacking and installing took about 45 minutes. I booted in to my new system, but I was shocked to enter a non-responsive system. The window manager was lightdm or something. I had to login to the cli, install Kubuntu system and then set the windowing system to sddm and then to Plasma X11. With my Linux expertise and web searching I fix all the glitches and enter in to the shiny new KDE system.
After login and first install, I was taken aback but the aesthetics of the system. I felt so proud and happy to use such a sweet OS. In today's age of Apps and AI, the operating system is no longer a matter. And, Linux has come a long way, its a highly mature and stable and user-friendly system. But I am proud to Linux which gives me the freedom and a lot of choices. I am not tied to a corporate OS like Windows or Mac which decides what's good for you and changes its policies at its whims. Their decisions are mostly dumb in my opinion. On the contrary, the Linux desktop has reached such a maturity, stability, beauty and ease of use and Kubuntu 25.04 is a testimony to it. In my opinion, it's the most beautiful desktop in the world and I feel elated to use it. The Breeze icons look gorgeous, the font rendering is so good. There are no glitches whatsoever. My favourite desktop enviroment, KDE has reached its pinnacle and I wonder what more would be there to improve. However, as any human endeavour, computing never ceases to evolve. Computing has changed a lot in the long years since I have been using it. My daughter who is 7, is a different a kind of user, she has started her computing in the age of tablets and apps. Her understanding and her vision of the computing platform would be much different. I am still wondering, how the open source platform and KDE in particular will handle AI and VR and the ever changing forms of computing in the years to come.
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